Category Archives: Ancestral History

A very bright anthropology student from Michigan, with a personal interest in mathematics, statistics and probability theory, asked for my opinion on some of his interesting thoughts about where we all came from. Here is my reply.

I wish I had your knowledge of, and skills with, numbers so I could respond more intelligently to your thoughts and questions. Following are some of my thoughts based on what I’ve read, and what I see daily as I visually travel back and forth through the most extremely interconnected web of thousands of years of ancestral history (the Family Forest®), based on recorded history.

I believe that the theoretical estimate that an average person in 1500 has about 1.5 million offspring alive today is too low. Here’s why.

The Family Forest® is based on what actually did happen, according to recorded history, and not on what might happen, theoretically. Here are a few examples of what can happen in just one century.

Martha (Clarke) Willard (b. 1694, d. 1794) was said to have had 12 children, 90 grandchildren, 206 great-grandchildren, and 45 great-great-grandchildren when she died at the age of 100.

Catharine (Andrews) Shattuck (b. 2/16/1753 Ipswich, MA, d. 11/19/1845 Temple, NH) was said to have had 150 living descendants when she died, seven children, 51 grandchildren, 90 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren when she died.

In addition, I believed I read that one of the foremost living genealogists, Gary Boyd Roberts, estimated that prominent Colonial ancestor Governor Thomas Dudley may have 10 million descendants.

So couple the three actual one-century examples from above with the 1600 estimates, and it seems that a reasonable estimate from a 1500 person is tens of millions of living descendants.

It would be difficult to factor in the overlap that would need to be subtracted, but certainly the number should be very large.

Considering how many boxes each of us would need to fill in to truly know a substantial part of our deep ancestry (http://familyforest.com/resources/51/ancestors-at-a-glance), it may seem reasonable to assume that going back 400-500 years ago, we most certainly had at least one Japanese or Chinese ancestor.

Visually exploring so many generation-by-generation ancestral pathways zig-zagging geographically over the millennia in the Family Forest®, according to recorded history, leads me to the following opinions.

My odds of having at least one Japanese or Chinese ancestor in the last 500 years is in the range of slim to none. During the last 1,000 years, the odds becomes quite possible. During the last 2,000 years, I believe it is almost certain.

I also believe that the reverse is true about Japanese or Chinese descendants having some European ancestors.

Hopefully this helps. Please stay tuned here for a free Family Forest® give-a-way that will be available in a couple of days. It will help illustrate genetic migration over centuries.

That’s exactly what Bruce Harrison, the mastermind behind Family Forest®, would have thought before he spent tens of thousands of hours questing through the nooks and crannies of recorded history, filtering and distilling the knowledge that was assembled by experts, and digitally-indexing the results into an amazingly interconnected network of ancestral pathways that can now be explored visually.

The attached chart is a small example of the answers the Family Forest® can generate. Here’s what you will find: The first column is 21 people. The second column shows their connection to the Oscars, and the third column shows their role. The next four columns show the computer-generated relationships of the 21 people in the first column to other people.

The fifth column is Seth MacFarlane, Host of the 85th Academy Awards. The next column is to the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, the present Lord of Highclere Castle, which is the setting for PBS’ enormously popular series Downton Abbey.

Highclere Castle is also the setting for “Lady Almina And The Real Downton Abbey”, a present-day New York Times best-seller written by the 8th and current Countess of Carnarvon. The 8th Earl of Carnarvon has extensive early Colonial American ancestry, which makes him a single-digit cousin to many millions of Downton Abbey fans. Almost half of the people in the column are his single-digit cousins.

The following column is to the founder of Briquebec Castle.“This one is the most fascinating to me,” says Harrison, “because, according to the recorded history mapped out in the Family Forest®, it is one of my own ancestral homes.” And not only does Briquebec Castle have Knights Templar history (remember the “Da Vinci Code”?), but it is possible to book a stay at the castle tonight, and it is the focal point of what may be the world’s largest eBook. In addition to Briquebec being an ancestral home to at least 20 of the 21 people in column one, it is also an ancestral home of the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, owner of Highclere Castle, and the Harbaugh brothers.

And speaking of the Harbaugh brothers, the last column is to the two of them who will be making history by dueling in Super Bowl XLVII this coming Sunday, Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh and San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh.

What do the 85th Academy Awards, PBS’ Downton Abbey, Knights Templar, and Super Bowl XLVII have in common?

They are all connected to each other (and consequently to millions of fans), through generation-by-generation family ties in the Family Forest®.

Sounds impossible?

That’s exactly what I would have thought, before I spent tens of thousands of hours questing through the nooks and crannies of recorded history, filtering and distilling the knowledge that was assembled by experts, and digitally-indexing the results into an amazingly interconnected network of ancestral pathways that can now be explored visually.

The attached chart is a small example of the answers the Family Forest®can generate. Here’s what you will find.

The first column is 21 people. The second column shows their connection to the Oscars, and the third column shows their role.

The next four columns show the computer-generated relationships of the 21 people in the first column to other people.

The 8th Earl of Carnarvon has extensive early Colonial American ancestry, which makes him a single-digit cousin to many millions of Downton Abbey fans. Almost half of the people in the column are his single-digit cousins.

The following column is to the founder of Briquebec Castle. This one is the most fascinating to me because, according to the recorded history mapped outin the Family Forest®, it is one of my own ancestral homes.

And not only does Briquebec Castle have Knights Templar history (remember the Da Vinci Code?), but it is possible to book a stay at the castle tonight, and it is the focal point of what may be the world’s largest eBook. In addition to Briquebec being an ancestral home to at least 20 of the 21 people in column one, it is also an ancestral home of the 8thEarl of Carnarvon, owner of Highclere Castle, and the Harbaugh brothers.

So for the 2012 Presidential Election we decided to revisit the subject using a new digital resource that did not exist at the time of the 2008 Presidential Election, the Family Forest® National Treasure.

For a head-to-head comparison, I generated Family Forest® kinship reports(# 10) for both President Obama and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In the quantity category, it was a very close race.

In the Family Forest® National Treasure Mitt Romney is related through birth or marriage to 35 U.S. Presidents (one of them is President Obama) and 18 U.S. Vice Presidents. President Obama is related through birth or marriage to 33 U.S. Presidents and 16 U.S. Vice Presidents.

It is in the quality category that Mitt Romney substantially wins over President Obama.

President Obama has only one single digit cousin (9th cousin or closer) who was either a U.S. President or a U.S. Vice President, President Hoover (8th cousin three times removed, 8C3R).

Mitt Romney has 14 single digit cousins who were either a U.S. President or a U.S. Vice President, and eight of them were Presidents.

In order of closeness, they are President Grant (5C4R), President Cleveland (6C3R), Vice President Curtis (6C3R), President Fillmore (6C4R), Vice President Colfax (6C4R), Vice President Morton (6C5R), President Harding (7C1R), President Franklin Roosevelt (8C1R), President Ford (8C1R), Vice President Rockefeller (8C2R), President Taft (8C3R), Vice President Wallace (9C), President Hoover (9C1R), and Vice President Humphrey (9C3R).

The newest release of the Family Forest® was called National Treasure because among other abilities, it is an educational resource that networks more Americans through generation-by-generation family ties to more of the key people, places, and events in U.S. history than any other single digital resource, including Facebook.

It appears that it may have been at the Golden Globes this year. Michelle Williams won for Best Actress for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe. Could her award-winning performance have been because they share ancestors?

According to recorded history, they are ninth cousins once removed through their Peabody/Paybody ancestors, and they both have a number of other entertainment cousins who are also descended from the early Peabody/Paybody family of Massachusetts.

Those cousins include Glenn Close (one of Michelle’s competitors at the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards this year), Kyra Sedgwick, Halle Berry, Racquel Welch, Grace Slick, Mark Wahlberg, David Hyde Pierce, Orson Welles, Robert Lansing, and if you consider the political arena to be entertaining, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman.

Kristine and I will be tuning into ABC on Sunday Febraury 26th to watch the 84th Academy Awards and see if Michelle wins the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of her cousin, Marilyn Monroe, or if one of her other cousins wins (Michelle is also a distant cousin of Meryl Streep).

So from an actress or actor in Albert Nobbs, Carnage, Cinema Verite, Enlightened, Iron Lady, Moneyball, 30 Rock, and Too Big To Fail, it is now possible for you to travel through a single web of generation-by-generation family ties from each of those eight movies or TV shows to each of the other seven.

The web of family ties in the Family Forest® connects actual ancestors in each European and U.K. country to Hollywood.

That’s why we say the Family Forest® Project is, along with numerous other edutainment objectives, Networking Family History with Hollywood™.

Enjoy the 69th Annual Golden Globes on NBC on Sunday January 15, 2012.

This auction caught my attention not only because I’m one of the millions of John Wayne fans, but also because our Family Forest® Project is Networking Family History with Hollywood™ and U.S. history.

From my professional perspective, I wondered how many fans and bidders have family ties to John Wayne that they are still unaware of.

So I ran a Family Forest® kinship report for John Wayne to see how far the Family Forest has networked him through generation-by-generation pathways to his fans. You can see a summary of the results in this PDF report, and maybe spot a few of your own ancestors.

Does TV host Ellen Degeneres know that she shares ancestors with John Wayne?

Does radio host Don Imus know that he shares ancestors with John Wayne?

Does fellow cowboy actor Viggo Mortensen know that he shares ancestors with John Wayne?

Would some of John Wayne’s contemporaries, like Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, and Marjorie Merriweather Post, have been surprised to discover that they are distant cousins of this towering Hollywood icon?

Will you be surprised to discover that you share ancestors with Hollywood actors and historical figures?